There’s a social media circulating that the child actor who starred in Drake’s 2013 music video Started From the Bottom is currently a producer on the rapper’s latest album, For All the Dogs. The idea of a child who starred in one of Drake’s biggest videos becoming a key figure in his music is a feel-good story. But is it true?
As fan communities and entertainment websites buzzed with this so-called full-circle moment, we decided to examine the report and discern fact from fiction.
Drake’s Started From the Bottom video, directed by acclaimed director Director X, was a turning point in the rap artist’s career. Released in 2013, it featured a dramatized version of Drake’s rise to stardom, beginning in his youth.
The child role went to the offspring of one of Drake’s own friends, said Director X. Casting wanted to be genuine, casting children who were part of Drake’s own network to add a personal feel to the visuals. The actual video functioned to further cement Drake’s own narrative of perseverance and hard work, and the child actor was an integral, yet secondary, part of the story.
Skip forward to October 6, 2023, when Drake released his much-heralded album For All the Dogs. The album featured production by a host of veterans and newcomers to the scene, such as Noah “40” Shebib, Boi-1da, and Southside, just to name a few. One song, however, called Something About You, is not on the album.
The myth that the child actor on Started From the Bottom co-produced Something About You is further compounded by the fact that the song just does not feature on Drake’s official discography. Nyan and Kiyoshi have been linked to a number of productions attributed to Drake, but no credible source suggests that the actor on the 2013 clip is any of them.
A thorough review of For All the Dogs credits does not include any mention of the Started From the Bottom child actor. No documentation of the actor’s work in any music production projects is on record within the business, nor is he discussed in any interviews or credits. Drake and his representatives have not commented on the rumor yet, further indicating it is false.
In addition, Started From the Bottom is produced by prolific producer Mike Zombie, who has closely worked with Drake. It is not mentioned anywhere that the young actor who appeared on the video had aspirations to be a producer, much less one working on Drake’s latest venture.
While this particular rumor is not true, it is not uncommon for child performers and background actors to grow up to be significant players in the industry.
For example, Jaleel White first gained fame as Steve Urkel on Family Matters before moving into writing and producing. Similarly, Keenan Thompson started as a child performer on All That and Kenan & Kel before becoming a cast member on Saturday Night Live, one of the longest-running cast members in the show’s history.
Even in the music industry, artists like Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus were able to make a successful leap from child performers to full-fledged recording acts. Such changes are possible, as seen in these stories, yet in this context, nothing concrete exists to substantiate the claim that the Started From the Bottom actor has grown to be one of the producers of Drake.
